When we put Zoe to bed at night it’s anybody’s guess when she’ll actually go to sleep. She has her old man’s circadian rhythm and stays up all night. Bedtime is 8:00, but sleepytime is usually more like 11:00.

One thing she does in the hours between the two is send email. Here’s what was waiting in my inbox this morning:

$$$$$$$$I wish we were rich and we had a 90,6743 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

From your lips to God’s ears, peanut.

My co-worker and friend Gavin‘s mom died yesterday. Her health had been failing recently and she passed quietly in the hospital as he sat with her. I’m really sad for him.

…and yet so far. I got to the airport just in time to watch my flight leave without me.

The plane was still at the gate when I arrived, but “regulations” prevented them from opening the door they’d just closed for the passenger they’d waited for before closing it. Stupid. So I watched through the window as it sat there for another five minutes before pushing back and taxiing out to the runway for takeoff. So I took the next flight and made it to Fresno two hours later. Woo.

Of course at this point you’re wondering, “Hey Chuck, where’s the taxi picture?” Why, it’s right here:

My driver, Gevork, assured me that I did not need help.

And of course you’re wondering what the view out my hotel window is. Well, it’s dark outside right now so it’s difficult to see much of anything, but I think there’s enough light for you to make out the friggin’ VOLLEYBALL GAME going on right outside my window:

I especially liked all the times my side’s defense sucked and the other team was able to spike the ball against my wall. That was grreeaatt.

Fresno does have its bright side, though: One casino downtown and two others within a 30 minute drive. This trip might not be so bad after all.

Well, hell. Now it looks like maybe I shot myself in the foot with all that dawdling.

I called for a cab nearly an hour ago and had a hell of a time getting anyone on the phone at several cab companies. When I finally did get someone to answer, she told me it would be a 40 minute wait, “maybe longer,” before a cab was available. Now, 50 minutes later, it’s looking like longer. And I just remembered that we’ve got a transit strike going on out here, which explains why A) nobody would answer the phone and B) why there’s such a delay in getting a cab: Taxis are the only public transportation running, so I’m competing with every maid and nanny in the city. Now I’m thinking I might miss my flight.

And I was having such a good lazy day!

Oopsie, I made a mistake. My flight out is at 4:50, not 4:30. That buys me another 20 minutes of fucking-off time.

Guess I’ll go check in on the Hot Nineteen-Year-Old Girls Who Like Fat Balding Older Men chat room.

I have a flight out of LAX to Fresno at 4:30 this afternoon and I just can’t seem to get motivated to get ready to go. Maybe it’s because it’s Fresno, I don’t know.

The flight will start boarding at 4:00. I’m not checking a bag so I don’t really need to be there until 3:30 and even then I’ll still be early. Traffic should be fairly light, so my taxi doesn’t need to be here until about 2:45 (amended from 2:00 after writing this sentence). I still need to shave, shower, and finish packing, which will take about 30 minutes, which means I should get going on by 2:00 to give myself a little bit of a cushion. It’s 12:15 now, which means I can keep screwing around for another hour and 45 minutes.

I wonder what’s on TV?

We’ve got a film crew camped out all around us, shooting a something-or-other at the house behind us. The Notification of Filming the production company sent out describes the action as: “Interior, exterior dialogue. Driving scenes. Domestic fight scene. Police activity. Emergency vehicles with flashing lights. Cameras & equipment on sidewalk, in curblane & across street.” Sounds like, well, half the shows I worked on when I was in the business.

The dressing rooms and honeywagon are parked along the side of the backyard and the grip truck is right outside my bedroom window. Ah, memories. The grip truck. My home away from home in my film crew days. I’ve been out of production for six or seven years now but I still miss it sometimes. It was long, hard, brutal work sometimes, but it was also a lot of fun. If I were single I’d probably still be doing it.

So anyway, we’ve got film crew running around all over the place. I did a slow drive-by a little while ago to scope out the production and see if I knew anyone from back in the day but there were no familiar faces.

I have to admit to a little curiousity about just what they’re shooting, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to ask. That’s the thing about working on the set — there’s always a cordon of looky-loos watching every move, whispering among themselves, jostling for the best viewing positions, flagging down anyone who comes near to ask “What are you filming? Who’s in it? Where’s (star name)’s trailer?” Etc. They never get the truth, at least not from me.

“Diaper commercial” was my stock answer. We’d be resetting for a fight scene where a stuntman had just been thrown through the front window of a tattoo parlor and started brawling on the sidewalk, police cars and fire trucks all around with lights flashing, helicopter circling above, SWAT teams hunkered down behind parked cars … and some doughy tourist from Ohio would ask “Are you making a movie?” Nope, I’d say, diaper commercial. And then I’d get back to flying a mambo-combo, producer, and a 4-by floppy in to the set.

Sigh… I miss gripology.

There’s finally a term for the songs that get stuck in your head: Earworm.

Beth and I have had our go-rounds with them and we had already stumbled across one of the suggested methods for getting a song out of your head: make like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and “give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now!” We sometimes do a sort of tag-team where she’ll give me hers and I’ll give her something different back, and every once in awhile we’ll just give each other one for fun. A perennial “favorite” in our household is Cher’s Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves. (And now one of you has it.) (I took a short break after writing that last sentence there and guess what — I gave it to myself.)

Even Zoe gets them. We went to Second Spin a week or so ago and picked up some CDs, and among my choices were two from the .99 cent rack: Cher’s Greatest Hits (including our two top earworms: Gypsies and Halfbreed), and one I just picked at random, Jimmy Ray. The Cher was, well, Cher, but the Jimmy Ray actually turned out okay. It’s vaguely rockabilly pop and has a few decent songs on it that have gotten stuck in my head — and Zoe’s head too, apparently. Over dinner the other night she put her hands over her ears in frustration and growled, “Da-a-ad!!! I keep hearing that “shake-a shake-a shake-a” song in my brain!” I immediately recognized it as song #2 on the CD, Goin’ To Vegas, because I’ve been infected with that particular earworm too.

So I did the caring, fatherly thing and I helped her — I gave her song #1, Are You Jimmy Ray? instead. “Daa-aa-aad!!!” was the anguished response. She really was mad at me about it (for a kid with my sense of humor, sometimes she has no sense of humor), so I tried to explain to her how everyone gets songs stuck in their head and how the best way to deal with it is give it to someone else, and that led to me telling her about how much Beth hates Gypsies, and that reminded me of the new Cher CD, so I ran to get it and put it on the kitchen CD player — and when I got back Beth was gone. So I enjoyed a little of it myself.

Halfbreed! That’s all I ever heard
Halfbreed! How I came to hate the word.

And then Zoe left the room too.

Halloween is just around the corner, so preparations of the Mausoleum de Atkins have begun. Yesterday’s total at the party store: $170. We take our Halloween seriously around here.

Well, not all of us do. For me and Zoe, Halloween is our favorite holiday. We decorate the house, there are weeks of costume deliberations, trick or treating is elaborately planned, jack-o-lantern designs are carefully selected… We like us some Halloween. But Beth doesn’t. Beth is, in fact, the Halloween Grinch. Despite her (or to spite her?), the decorating began today.

Zoe spent the day field-testing her Spiderella costume and was kind enough to pose next to all the decorations for me. First we have the tall gravestone:

This will go in our courtyard graveyard, along with the other headstones from last year that I can’t find right now. I’m going to put together a few dead bodies crawling out of their graves, and the whole thing will be creeped-up by the fog machine I picked up at the party store. Pictures of this will come after I set it all up next weekend.

Then there’s the door decoration Zoe picked out:

The rubber tongue was a key consideration in her selecting it:

I found myself strangely attracted to it. We got along very well; I think maybe we have a future together:

I should probably also mention that the dogs will be dressing up too. In Beth’s defense, she’s the one who went out and got the costumes for them, so she’s only half-Grinch, I guess. Courtesy of Beth, here’s Suki in her costume. She’s even less thrilled about it than she looks:

I couldn’t get Billy to pose properly for his picture, so you’ll have to trust me when I tell you it’s a lovely headband with a little vampire bat that sits right between his ears. He keeps scraping it off on the floor, I don’t know why.

When you’re decorating the house, it’s almost a law that you have to use that cheesy stretchy spiderweb stuff, isn’t it?

We think the spiderwebby stuff looks best if you don’t stretch it all out evenly, so there’s clumps of it that make it look like cheesy stretchy spiderweb stuff. You get more of a white trash Halloween effect that way, which is nice.

And the piece de resistance is the feather in the cap of that white trash look — the huge half-assed spiderweb nailed to the tree by the front door:

Yes, we’re unreasonably proud of this piece. I especially like how it looks like it was made out of strips of torn bedsheets … because it was! Also, the way it hangs there loosely, looking nothing like a real spiderweb, is very pleasing to the eye. And the crowning glory of it, of course, is the skeleton dangling from the bottom with the spider positioned to begin snacking on its head. That was Zoe’s idea. I’m so proud.

So that’s the state of the Halloween preparations today. I’ll be in Fresno all next week but will be coming home over the weekend to carve many pumpkins and put together the dead bodies for the graveyard. I’ll post more pictures then, maybe even with the fog machine on.

Oooooooohhhhhhhhh!!! Boo.

Gray Davis is bouncing back from the recall nicely. He’s already found a new job!